His Wife Leaves Him

Courage; ayez courage. She’s already been taken away. You were out so long, we made all the arrangements ourselves. We were waiting here to tell you.” “Daddy,” one of his daughters says behind him. …There seems to be a war going on. Their house and all the surrounding ones have been destroyed by explosives. Gwen’s running down the street with Rosalind in her arms. She seems to be around six months old. But it can’t be her, he thinks, since Gwen and Maureen and he went to her college graduation exercises a few weeks ago. Has to be somebody else’s kid who looks exactly like Rosalind did at that age. But why would Gwen be running down the street with her? She’s also got on Rosalind’s favorite pajamas then — the ones with dancing bears and toads on them — and is waving and smiling at him and she seems to be saying “Daddy, Daddy” to him. “Gwen, wait up,” he yells, running after them. “I apologize for being late. Forgive me, already, will ya? But I’m here now, aren’t I, so tell me why you’re running with this strange kid and what happened.” She turns around, holds the child above her head and says “I’ve no place to go now, no place to go. That’s the situation in a nutshell, I’m afraid, and you’re lost.” Is there a way of getting out of this? he thinks. He’s done it before. Come on, come on: out! …He wakes up. What to make of it? he thinks. The “lost” part he thinks he gets, but the rest is confusing and disturbing. He doesn’t want to think about it or even remember it. Good thing these damn things disappear so fast on their own. He looks at the window. It’s still dark out, probably isn’t even near six yet, he thinks. Go to sleep, even if you’re not tired. In other words, try to, and he shuts his eyes. …He’s outside the house, digging a hole for another rose bush Gwen bought, when there’s an explosion. He looks up and sees their roof collapsing. Oh, shit, no, he thinks, another invasion. “Enough, I want peace, for freaking sakes,” he yells. Then bombs or mortar shells or something like that, he thinks — could even be bazooka rockets, though you never hear about them anymore — explode around the house, a little shrapnel cutting into his arm, but he’s not bleeding. His neighbors’ houses seem untouched, though the explosives are going off around them too and all their tall trees have been destroyed by them. He hears helicopters. What sounds like ten to twenty of them, flying close together? He looks at the sky but just sees a V-shaped formation of geese or ducks flying in his direction. Then he hears them when they’re directly overhead: ducks. Gwen runs out of their house carrying Maureen, who’s just an infant. If he’d known they were inside he would have gone in to get them, he thinks, no matter how dangerous it was. How come he didn’t think they might be in there? Stupid of him, stupid. The kitchen and dining room windows shatter and flames come out. “Help me,” Gwen shouts, running down the street with Maureen in her arms. “Someone, anyone, save me.” He throws down the shovel, kicks the rose bush and says “That’s it for you, buddy,” and runs after her and yells “Gwen, I’m here, I’ll help you, but stop. I’m not as fast as you, even when you’re carrying Maureen, and I can’t run anymore. My knees. But don’t worry, sweetheart, we’ll find a way out.” “No,” she says, still running, “there’s no place for me to go.” “There is, I’m sure of it, and this time I’m not going to let you down. And where’s Rosalind? She still inside? Don’t tell me I made another mistake.” She keeps running and then disappears around the curve of the street. “My God, no,” he screams, and runs toward the house, then walks as fast as he can, as both his knees buckle. …He’s in their guest bathroom, scrubbing his nails with a nailbrush. “They’re not clean enough,” he says, “I have to scrub them more.” He puts more soap on the brush and scrubs his fingers and nails and rinses them under the faucet. “They’re still dirty,” he says. “I’m not cleaning them hard enough, and I’ve only done the right hand, not the left.” He squirts liquid soap on his hands this time and scrubs both sides of them with the brush and then the fingers and nails. “Scrub harder,” he says, “even harder. Your hands are still dirty; your fingers and nails still filthy. Even your wrists could use a bit of cleaning. You can’t touch other people with your hands unless they’re absolutely clean, so if you have to, scrub till they hurt.” He rubs the bar of soap into the bristles of the brush and scrubs his wrists and then the hands and fingers and nails much harder than he did before. He scrubs the right hand so hard that he cuts several of his knuckles. He holds the hand under the faucet to wash the blood away. “Blood, too, is dirty,” he says, “so I have to start over. And now the brush is dirty too, so clean that first.” He cleans the entire brush with the bar of soap, rinses it, then rinses the soap and scrubs all of his hands again. “That should do it, he thinks, “but it hasn’t. The wrists and brush are now clean but I have to scrub every part of my hands some more.” He squirts liquid soap into his palm and runs the brush bristles in it. …Gwen and he are walking past a bookstore. He stops, holds her by her elbow and says “Want to look in the window?” “You know, this is as good a time and place as any to tell you something I’ve been holding back on for too long.” “What’s that?” he says, and she says “Well, to be quick about it, you smell. Not you personally — as a person, I’m saying — but your body.” “Good? Bad? How do I smell?” and she says “Very bad.” “That’s funny,” he says, “because you once — okay, this was quite a number of years ago — said I smelled like toast, which I took to be good. But how can you say I smell very bad? I shampoo what little hair I have, twice a week. I take a shower almost every day — maybe three days out of four, so every day that I need to and some days when I don’t. I change my clothes — socks and undershorts and whatever shirt I might be wearing, usually a T — daily. And I smell my sneakers and moccasins and shoes every day before I put them on to make sure they have no odor. If they do, even the slightest, I put deodorizing powder in.” “I’m telling you, you smell so bad I can’t even stand to be near you,” and she walks away. He watches her cross the street, hail a cab and get in it. He raises an arm, pulls back the short sleeve of his T-shirt and smells his underarm. “What’s she talking about?” he says. “I don’t smell anything.” He looks in the bookstore window. Nothing of mine in there, he thinks. Why don’t they have anything of mine? …He’s driving home and thinks his family’s not going to believe what he went through today. “First, a flat,” he’ll say. “Then, when I’m fixing it, a woman backs up into my rear and busts both my taillights. While I’m waiting to get the tire fixed, I slip on a strip of black ice and cut my hands and scrape my knees. Of course, my pants tore, but that hardly counts, although I felt stupid walking around all day with holes in them. Later, some guy screams the worst obscenities at me because he said I wanted to steal his parking space. I gave up the space to him, though I’d gotten to it first, because I didn’t want him coming back after I parked and breaking off my windshield wipers. So I drove around for half an hour looking for a spot, before I gave up and decided to put the car in a lot. But they were all filled except for one that charged forty dollars, and only in cash, while all the others would’ve been twenty, check, cash or card. Then, around one, I go out for lunch and forget to get my credit card back at the restaurant. When I go back there, they say they don’t have it. I said ‘C’mon, I last used it here,’ but all right, and from their phone I call Chase Visa to cancel the card. Only good thing to come out of the day is that no one had run up a number of illegal charges on the card in the forty or so minutes since I lost it. And because so many of our monthly bills are automatically deducted from that card, I’ll have my work cut out for me once I get the new one. Then, returning to work, I get a stomachache so bad, and probably from that lunch, that I had to sit on a bench outside for around fifteen minutes till I felt good enough to resume walking. Just before I’m leaving school, my department chair calls me into her office and says I’m doing, as she put it, based on the complaints of some of my students, a rather lackluster job teaching this semester, that my student evaluations for the last semester were pretty poor too, and that there’s a good chance my contract won’t be renewed for next year. What I’m getting at — and I left out a few things: losing several stamped envelopes I was about to drop in the mailbox; forgetting to show up for an important faculty committee I’m on; misplacing my school keys, so having to call Security to let me into my office; jamming the photocopy machine and the department’s administrative assistant giving me hell about it — is that it’s been one of the worst days of my life. Nothing tragic or crushing or that I couldn’t deal with; just one thing after the next; one thing after the next. Even when I tried calling home to talk to Mommy about it — I felt I had to speak to someone — the line was constantly busy.” He gets out of the car and goes inside the house. “Hello, I’m home, everybody,” he shouts. Maureen comes into the kitchen. She looks despondent, starts crying. “What’s wrong?” he says. Then Rosalind comes into the kitchen and starts crying. “Both of you? What the heck’s the matter? — Gwen,” he shouts. “What’s happened? The kids can’t speak. — Where’s your mother?” he asks them. “She’s not answering either. She out?” …Gwen and he are at the Baltimore airport, sitting at a table in a snack bar. Behind her, through a floor-to-ceiling window, he sees a huge jet taking off. She’s saying something, and he gestures for her to wait till the plane’s gone: he can’t make out anything she’s saying. Then it’s quiet and she says “I hate to be cut off in midsentence,” and he says “I was only trying to let you know I couldn’t hear you over the noise and that whatever you were saying was being wasted. Now, what were you trying to tell me?” and she says “That you shouldn’t have driven me here. I could have taken a cab. And that after you did drive me here, you shouldn’t have parked. But if you had to park, you shouldn’t have come into the terminal with me. This only prolongs what I know is misery for you.” “Misery? Being with you? Hardly. I’d buy a ticket and get on the same plane with you if you let me. Sit next to you, if the seat was available, just to have six more hours with you. If the seat was taken, I’d ask the person sitting in it to switch seats with me. If the person didn’t want to, I don’t know what I’d do. Do you really have to go?” “Don’t ask silly questions.” “You’d be much happier with us, you know.” “With the kids, yes, I’d be happy;” she says; “very happy. But, in case you forgot, I’m married to someone else now, I love the big lug, and, unfortunately for me and the kids, he got a very good job in California, so I had to move out there with him. Maybe one day we’ll come back. He understands I don’t want to be separated from the kids too long.” “Listen, move back with me now,” he says. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever really loved. Without you, I’m finished for the rest of my life.” “Not so; you’ll find someone.” “No one,” he says; “I’ve tried. It doesn’t work with anyone but you. Nothing even came close.” “Here, I’ve got a couple of minutes left; I’ll find someone for you. — Miss,” she says to a waitress walking by and who looks almost exactly like Gwen did twenty years ago “are you taken?” “If you mean am I busy, no. You’d like me to get you something? Refill on your coffees? Your check?” “I meant, are you attached to anyone in what we’ll call a romantic way?” “Yeah,” the waitress says. “I live with a guy I like and we’ll probably get married in a year.” “You see?” he says to Gwen. “No matter what anyone tries to do for me, it never works, it’ll never work, and I don’t want it to. All I want is to be with you.” “Darn,” she says, looking at her watch. “Time for me to go to the boarding area and fly home.” She stands, grabs her bags, says “Don’t walk me, and this time do what I say. Besides, they won’t let you past Security.” She puts her cheek out, he kisses it and she leaves. “You forgot to pay for your coffee,” he says. “Only kidding. I’ll take care of it and leave a good tip. Look at that: you leave, I leave.” She doesn’t turn around, keeps walking. “Please look back at me and wave,” he says. She doesn’t, just keeps walking, “All right, keep walking,” he yells. “It’s supposed to be healthy for you, I read. But don’t ever come back, you hear? Don’t even think to. It’s too tough on me. I can’t take it. Don’t even come to the East Coast, because I just might bump into you. Florida, Maine, and every place in between: just stay away. You want to see the kids, I’ll fly them out to you and take care of the costs.” …The doorbell rings. He’s upstairs in his parents’ apartment and his mother says “Martin, could you get it? I’m all tied up.” He goes downstairs and opens the door. Their postman, who says “Man, have you ever become the hot ticket. So much recognition from the outside. Just look at all these letters for you, from everywhere, and a package sent express from France.” “Nothing for the rest of my family?” and the man says “Not today.” He takes the mail into the kitchen and opens the package. It’s a small tin of cookies. No return address on the wrapping or note or card who it came from. His father’s sitting at the kitchen table in the blue-and-white striped terry cloth bathrobe he wore for more than forty years. He’s having breakfast and cleans all the pulp out of half a grapefruit with a tablespoon till the inside of the rind is white and smooth, then holds it over his face and squeezes whatever juice he can get out of it into his mouth. “Save the yellow part of the rind for the garbage,” he says. His father looks at him as if puzzled by the remark. “I was ribbing you. It seemed like you wanted to eat all of it. Don’t; you’ll get sick. Look, cookies someone sent me, I think a secret admirer. Like one?” He gives him one of the five cookies in the tin. His father dunks the cookie into his coffee and nibbles it. “Good, huh? They’re supposed to be the best. From France, from someone I don’t know the name of but who obviously thinks well of me. Unless they’re laced with poison. Just ribbing you again.” His father continues dunking and nibbling. “Mom,” he says, “want a cookie?” She’s pulling a baking sheet of mandelbrot out of the oven. “I’d be delighted,” she says, “if you took one of mine.” “You’d be delighted if I took one of your cookies, or delighted to take one of mine?” “Both; neither. Why do you have to complicate everything? Try not to be so clever. In the long run, it hurts.” “Hurts me? You? Hurts who? And in the short run, does it also hurt, but less so?” and she says “See w